Our Property

I thought that I should give some background about our property. Where we started, what we've done and what we're working to.

It all began in December of 2005 when we bought our house. We found a house with just under 1 1/2 acres of land. We picked this house for several reasons. The house was big enough for all of our children, the kitchen was large enough to be able comfortably cook in, the house had lots of space between the other houses and it was far enough outside of the city to get some quiet and see the stars.

When we first bought our house the majority of the land was covered in weeds topping out at about 8 feet tall. We didn't think it would be to difficult to cut down and clear the weeds, boy were we wrong. It turns out that in the time the house was empty the land had been used as a dumping site. Piles and piles of trash had been dumped all over the property and covered in dirt. The weeds grew over the top of them and hid the piles of trash. So when I started cutting down the weeds let me tell you about my shock.

So the first thing was to cut down all weeds and find out just how much trash there was. Once we realized that we had about an acre covered with 3-4 foot tall trash piles it was time to get a trash dumpster. It took us almost a year having the dumpster emptied twice a week to finally remove all of the trash.

Once all of the trash was removed we found disease and termite ridden mesquite trees and bushes all over the property and smashed remnants of a fence. We eventually removed all of the trees over the course of several years to finally get down to clean soil. We're still, 7 years later removing pieces of glass and metal we find buried in the dirt, but we're finally to a point of building things up.

We built a fence around the property. I built the fence using reclaimed steel fence posts for the upright posts and 1/2 rebar for the top rail. I did this because I was able to buy the reclaimed posts for $3.00 US a piece instead of $9.00 US a piece. Plus by using the rebar for the top rail I was able to buy 20 feet for $5.00 US instead of the top rail tubing for $13.00 US per 10 foot section. This all added up to a huge cost saving for us. I welded the top rails together and the rails to the top of the posts. By welding it all I did away with the extra cost for all the extra connectors. I also built all of the gates from scratch instead of buying prebuilt gates. By doing all of this ourselves it cost us about $1,500.00 US for the entire fence. This was a significant savings over the $12,000.00 quotes I got from the fence companies. If you  check salvage yards you can get great deals.

We also dug ditches and laid out irrigation lines around the perimeter of the front half of the property. I used the irrigation to water the trees I planted. I planted 11 pine trees, 2 mulberry trees, 2 apricot trees, 2 peach trees, 3 apple trees, 2 plum trees, 1 grapefruit tree, 1 lemon tree and 3 orange trees. Here in the Arizona desert the underground irrigation works really well for the trees and saves lots of water. We still have the back length of the fence line to plant with trees and put in irrigation.

We've also begun working on digging an underground cistern. The plan for the cistern is to use it as a rainwater and gray water collection system. I plan on re-plumbing the sinks, tubes and showers so the gray water is diverted to the cistern. Then pressurize the water to use for the irrigation and toilet tanks. This would allow us to use the water that we pay for twice and use less water. Once the cistern is completed I'm going to build a green house and my garden oven the top of it.

We're in the process of building our outdoor earth kitchen. The entire kitchen design is based around wood fired cooking. Since wood fired cooking is carbon neutral and just tastes so good this is my preferred cooking method. This outdoor kitchen also allows us to cook in the summer heat without adding more heat into the house. I dedicated my blog Earth Kitchen Project to the chronicling of building the outdoor kitchen.

I plan on building a chicken coop and smoke house in the back of the property as well as a shed and root cellar. I also have plans to build a workshop to give me a place to setup my tools permanently and work on my blacksmithing.

My plans also include building and installing alternative energy systems. I want to have a solar water heater, solar and wind power generators. I want to build a solar heating system for the hot tub. Maybe even research a viable alternative cooling system for the house. We also might build an outdoor shower and maybe even a small guest house. Overall our plans are to be as self sufficient as possible. I will continue posting pictures and information on all of our projects so that we may help in answering peoples questions or maybe even inspire them to try some of this on their own.
  

Earth Kitchen Project,,,My Outdoor Kitchen

The Earth Kitchen Project was the first blog I started and was my first at getting my hands dirty with cob and adobe building. If you are at all interested in wood fired ovens or my adventure in building an outdoor kitchen area out of cob and adobe the please feel free to read the blog at earthkitchenproject.com. The earth kitchen project blog is specifically focused on building my outdoor kitchen.

This is the the first part of my outdoor kitchen almost completed. This is my large oven. It's a wood fired oven that cooks pizza, breads, roasts, vegetables and more beautifully. The inside open space of the oven is 48 inches in diameter and 27 inches tall. It's a big oven and I love it.

I have so much information about building the oven as well as plans for the rest of the kitchen that I put all the information into 1 blog, the earthkichenproject.com. So feel free to enjoy that blog as well. I hope it can help and maybe inspire you to build something of your own.

Home Built Forge 2.0

I am still very proud of my boys for building the large forge as their summer project. It was the first post I put on this blog. I did however run into an issue with the forge, it's a fuel hog. I figure that if you had 4 or more people all needing a forge at the same time the large forge is awesome but, unless you're working on something big the forge turns out to be too large for just 1 person. So a new project was born, to design and build a smaller more fuel efficient and more versatile forge. I again did some scrounging for materials and came up with what I think is a good design.

So I based my design on the brake drum ideas that are popular online. However I felt that the normal brake drum forges where too shallow so I got 2 matching drums and welded the open ends together. I then cut the top off to make a nice deep fire pot. I used some rebar for handles and supports and tubing for legs and tuyere. I also added an ash dump to this design. 

First thing that you notice is the handles. I made them taller and centered so that I can use a rod, pipe or anything through the handles to remove the lid or place the lid on while the forge is hot without being burnt. You'll also notice the tabs coming down from the lid. These lock into the ridges and keep the lid stable.

I wanted my fire pot to be removable for cleaning or any needed repairs. So to do this I welded small stubs of 1/2 inch rebar to the old rim to match the bolt hole pattern in the bottom of the fire pot. This allows the fire pot to easily be removed but, keeps it study for operation. The fire pot also holds down my diffuser plate. That way if it ever gets damaged it can simply be removed and replaced at a later date without having to rebuild anything.

I added the ring of rebar to act as a handle be able to move the forge when needed, to act as a buffer to help keep anyone from getting burnt and to give me a place to hang s few tools to tend the fire. The ring could also act a s a base for a support if I ever needed to add one.

Here you can see that I made a fairly deep fire pot in order to get some good controlled heats while at the same time attempting to conserve fuel. Both the large forge and this small forge were built with the idea of using wood and charcoal as fuel but, from what I've been told coal or coke could be used as well. I don't know of any coal suppliers near me in the middle of the Arizona desert but, we have lots of mesquite hard wood. I cook with mesquite cuttings all year long and always have some on hand.

I also did some research and found out that the EPA allows you to burn used oil and wood scraps form construction sites to pallets as a fuel source in forges, heaters, boilers, foundries and more. According to the EPA this is allowed, legal and considered recycling because none of it ends up in landfills and since it's considered waste the EPA sees it as using that energy for another purpose with little to no waste product left.

You can see here that I made 2 removable cutouts. I bent some rebar to match the curve of the fire pot to attach to the cutouts. Then I added 2 upright bars connected to the fire pot at an angle so the cutouts could be removed when needed.

My idea here was to be able to remove either side as needed or for longer work I could remove both cutouts in order to heat small sections at a time.

The nice thing about this design is the flexibility. This allows me to use a relatively small forge for many things and since the smaller forge is more fuel efficient I can conserve fuel, which is always a good thing.

Here is a picture with the cutouts removed and the top on. I plan on using this option for anything that needs concentrated heat like the forge welding of pattern steel.

Also I left the bolt and axle holes open in the top. I wanted use the top to get a chimney effect but, not blow all the heat out of the cutout openings.

I also had planned to use the cutouts in place and the top on when I was finished in order to help extinguish the fuel rather that just burn everything out every time.

Just a note on the fire pot. As you can see from this picture I did not try to completely weld the seem of the 2 brake drums. I was afraid that if I did then the weld may crack during a heating or cooling cycle. Once a crack starts it will run the entire length of the entire weld. So by only welding short beads if one cracks I don't have to worry about the entire upper half of the fire pot suddenly coming apart from a  crack that occurred during a heating or cooling cycle. This would be very bad to have happen while the forge was being fired. So I thought it would be a good idea to try and avoid that and not make a continuous weld.

I added an ash dump on this forge. The angle iron that I used wasn't wide enough so I had to add short triangular pieces to each side to make the closer wide enough to seal the bottom of the tuyere pipe. I just used 2 oversized nuts for the hinge point welded to 2 small steel plates to provide enough space for the pivot. I used a nut and bolt or the pivot pin and welded the angle iron to the pivot pin. I lined up the angle iron and the bottom of the tuyere to get a good seal and welded the steel plates to the tuyere.

I also decided to weld on some counter weight to the end of the angle iron to counter act the force of the air coming in through the tuyere. Depending on the force of the air that I need to use I ma have to add a little more counter weight.

Once I use the forge for a little while and I make sure everything is working right I'll give it a coat of black heat resistant paint to clean it up.

I also wanted to say that all of the material I used foe this forge was also scrounged for free so there was no cost for any of these materials.

The only other thing that I may end up doing is to add some clay and sand refractory around the base or the fire pot inside the old rim to help reflect the hat back to the fire pot instead of radiating out. I'll use the forge and test it out first to see if I need to add it or not.

I hope this has helped answer some questions or maybe given you some ideas.